November blossoms

Winter is right around the corner, but when I went home for lunch today, I decided to go see if I could find some flowers that were still blooming.

None of them looked as spectacular as they did a month ago, but they're all enough to make me smile and be glad for living in a place with a lingering fall.

Sunflowers like these are wonderful, as long as you remind them who's the boss. They tend to scatter seeds all over the place and will make their way to every cultivated bed or garden spot in the yard if you're not careful. But, hey, they bloom for a little while even after the first (or second!) frost.

This is a little poppy mallow that I started several years ago.

I think it's an annual, but it reseeds like sunflowers and cosmos, although it's not quite as persistent as either one. I have another one that's a darker shade of purple. Personally, I like this one better. The other one, of course, appears far more eager to rreseed and spread.

Snapdragons… aren't these just the best, most reliable flower? Once they're established, they seem to be one of the first things blooming in early spring and they're still blooming here in late fall.

Most of my zinnias are looking a little bedraggled and in some cases, downright dead due to the frost. This one, however, is still pretending it's late summer.

I checked the forecast and it looks like next week could be a little colder, with several nights down into the mid-20s. I may lose the flowers, which means the countdown for next spring will begin.